The World Bank on Sunday announced funding of up to $1 billion for Indonesia after it was rocked by a string of recent disasters, including a deadly earthquake-tsunami that killed thousands. CEO Kristalina Georgieva unveiled the funds at Indonesian holiday island Bali, where the Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been holding their annual […]

The World Bank on Sunday announced funding of up to $1 billion for Indonesia after it was rocked by a string of recent disasters, including a deadly earthquake-tsunami that killed thousands.

CEO Kristalina Georgieva unveiled the funds at Indonesian holiday island Bali, where the Bank and the International Monetary Fund have been holding their annual meetings.

A 7.5-magnitude quake and a resulting tsunami tore through Palu city on Sulawesi island on September 28, killing more than 2,000 people and leaving thousands more missing, presumed dead.

Rescue teams scoured the wreckage for a fortnight before calling off the search for the dead, acknowledging as many as 5,000 missing people might never be found.

Georgieva said the funds being made available by the Bank in the form of loans could be used for reconstruction but were also intended to help Indonesia build “resilience”, so it would be better prepared in the face of future disasters.

“Disasters will continue to hit and with climate change there will be more,” said Georgieva, who visited Palu earlier this week.

“The best memorial we can build for the victims of disaster is to build better, so next time when a disaster hits fewer people are affected, fewer lives are lost, and there is less damage.”

Nearly 90,000 people were displaced by the quake in Palu, forcing them into evacuation centres across the rubble-strewn city.

Officials said it could be two years before all the homeless are found permanent accommodation.

Aid groups say a dearth of clean drinking water and medical supplies remains a very real concern for 200,000 people in urgent need.

Donations have begun pouring into the coastal city of 350,000 after a slow start which saw Indonesia criticised for stalling the flow of relief supplies.

The shallow 7.5-magnitude tremor was more powerful than a series of quakes this summer that killed more than 550 people on the Indonesian island of Lombok and neighbouring Sumbawa.

Indonesia has been hit by a string of other deadly quakes, including a devastating 9.1-magnitude tremor that struck off the coast of Sumatra in December 2004, killing 220,000 throughout the region, including 168,000 in Indonesia.

“This is not one earmark for a certain project, this is something that can be used by the government to support (people) during this uncertain time,” she said.

The funding was particularly important in the current economic climate, she said, “with much higher interest rates, tightening of liquidity, (it is) a much harder environment for us to get financing from outside”.

Indonesia is one of the most disaster-prone nations on earth.

It lies on the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where tectonic plates collide and many of the world’s volcanic eruptions and earthquakes occur.

by Shaun TANDON / Diane DESOBEAU The music and political worlds joined together Saturday to press for development aid, gender equality and voter participation, with a festival in New York’s Central Park marred by a security scare. An unofficial closing event following a week of hectic diplomacy at the UN General Assembly, the Global Citizen […]

The music and political worlds joined together Saturday to press for development aid, gender equality and voter participation, with a festival in New York’s Central Park marred by a security scare.

An unofficial closing event following a week of hectic diplomacy at the UN General Assembly, the Global Citizen festival hands out free tickets to fans who pledge to take actions such as petitioning their governments to support efforts to end the most extreme global poverty.

Halfway through an evening headlined by The Weeknd and Janet Jackson, panic erupted as fans shouted, “Gunshots!” after hearing what was later revealed to be a falling barricade.

Hundreds of spectators raced to leave, trampling over one another as they tried to squeeze through fences. Many lost their shoes and bags and some, including at least one child, were briefly separated from their companions, AFP journalists at the scene said.

“We were trying to tell people to get up, get up, because we were crushing people under us,” said Paris Anthony, one of the fans.

Fifteen people were hurt but all injuries were minor, a police spokesman said.

As Coldplay frontman Chris Martin took the microphone to encourage calm, numerous fans were in tears and others left entirely, with the audience notably thinner when the music resumed.

The scare came almost one year to the day after a massacre of 58 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas.

– Encouraging voting –
In its seventh year at Central Park, Global Citizen — like this year’s General Assembly — paid tribute to anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, who would have turned 100 in 2018.

Global Citizen plans a major festival dedicated to Mandela and his anti-poverty vision on December 2 in Johannesburg headlined by Beyonce and Jay-Z.

While primarily focused on the developing world, the latest Central Park festival also zeroed in on the United States — encouraging voters to turn out for November 6 midterm elections, in which President Donald Trump’s Republican Party risks losing control of Congress.

Cardi B, the fast-rising rapper who was performing her first concert since giving birth in June, urged young people to pay attention.

“Last election, everybody took it as a joke — even me, I’m not gonna front. Because I thought, man, that person ain’t gonna win. And look where we’re at,” the 25-year-old Bronx native said in reference to Trump.

Also rallying voters were screen legend Robert De Niro and, through a video message, former first lady Michelle Obama.

“Voting is how we tell our government what we want, and what we don’t want. Put it another way — voting is how we hire and we fire our leaders!” De Niro said.

The senator was visibly moved after women confronted him in an elevator and demanded he pay attention to their experiences with sexual assault.

Flake was greeted at Global Citizen with cheers followed by a crowd chant of, “He’s the one who has the vote.” A smiling Flake said: “Feel free to join me in an elevator anytime.”

– Pledges from Ireland, Norway –
Officials attending Global Citizen put a priority on promoting equality for women and girls — seen as a critical front in the battle to eradicate extreme poverty.

Norway said it would contribute a much-needed $360 million to the Global Financing Facility, a World Bank-backed fund to support maternal and children’s health.

“Let’s call on the governments of the world to join us. Let’s call on them to beat us,” said Nikolai Astrup, Norway’s Minister for International Development.

Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Simon Coveney, announced that his country by 2030 would join the small club of nations to meet the UN goal of spending 0.7 percent of gross national income on foreign assistance.

Coveney said Ireland would spend at least 250 million euros ($290 million) in the next five years on global education with a focus on easing the gender gap.

Janet Jackson — playing a politically charged set that opened with her anti-racism song “The Skin Game” and included simulated domestic violence — told the crowd that she herself was well aware of physical and other abuse.

“I am sick, I am repulsed, I am infuriated by the double standards that continue to treat women as second-class citizens,” Jackson said to applause.

In his op-ed titled ‘How Not to Engage With Pakistan’ published in the New York Times, Olson, who served as the United States ambassador to Pakistan from 2012 to 2015, writes that Pakistan has greater leverage over the US than many imagine, and Trump’s latest approach towards the country is unlikely to work. “The keys to […]

In his op-ed titled ‘How Not to Engage With Pakistan’ published in the New York Times, Olson, who served as the United States ambassador to Pakistan from 2012 to 2015, writes that Pakistan has greater leverage over the US than many imagine, and Trump’s latest approach towards the country is unlikely to work.

“The keys to understanding Pakistan’s policy and the limitations of American options lie in geography and history… The geography that defines Pakistan’s security worries has also been a bane for the United States. For the past 16 years our military efforts in Afghanistan have been dependent on transit through Pakistani territory,”

Without Pakistani cooperation, our army in Afghanistan risks becoming a beached whale,”.

Olson writes that “despite an infusion of about $1 billion per year of development assistance during the Obama administration, money never gave the United States the leverage it desired.”

Pakistan knows that as long as the United States maintains an army in Afghanistan, it is more dependent on Pakistan than Pakistan is on it, he notes, adding that this “disconnect between Washington and Islamabad has lead to the decline in American and Pakistani relations . Olson believes China has done more for Pakistan then the United States over the past Seventeen years

Aid from the Chinese has increased. China has invested around $62 billion in Pakistani infrastructure under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, an element of the “One Belt, One Road” initiative.”

The diplomat writes that “the path of the tweet and highly public aid cuts is not a method that will engender success. The United States can address Afghanistan only with a political initiative. The ultimate answer to the Pakistan conundrum is to start a diplomatic initiative to bring peace to Afghanistan by opening talks with the Taliban.

“The Trump administration has publicly stated that it sees the conflict ending only through a negotiated solution. It is difficult to understand why no such diplomatic initiative had been started so far

Olson’s article comes amid a period of heightened tensions between the two nations that followed accusations from US President Donald Trump, who accused Pakistan of giving nothing but lies and deceit, thinking US leaders to be fools.

“They give safe havens to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!” Trump said in a tweet last week.

The Pakistani military, in response to the US move, said that the suspension of aid would impact bilateral security cooperation between the two nations and regional peace.

Mogadishu (AFP): A serious drought has left parts of Somalia at risk of famine and 320,000 children are already severely malnourished and in need of care, the UN humanitarian agency said Tuesday. “The level of humanitarian suffering in this country triggered by projected conflict, seasonal shocks and disease outbreaks are typically hard to bear, but the […]

Mogadishu (AFP): A serious drought has left parts of Somalia at risk of famine and 320,000 children are already severely malnourished and in need of care, the UN humanitarian agency said Tuesday.

“The level of humanitarian suffering in this country triggered by projected conflict, seasonal shocks and disease outbreaks are typically hard to bear, but the impact of this drought represents a threat of a different scale and magnitude,” said Peter de Clercq of the agency UNOCHA.

Somalia is one of several East African nations, including South Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya, suffering from two failed rainy seasons, leading to food shortages and the death of livestock across the region in what some have said is the worst drought in over five years.

“Expanding drought conditions have left hundreds of thousands of Somalis facing severe food and water shortages. Overall, some five million people are in need of humanitarian assistance,” said de Clercq.

The humanitarian community in Somalia is seeking $864-million (800 million euros) for its operations in 2017, to “avert catastrophe” from the drought.

Famine early warning system FEWSNET warned Monday that if 2017 rains were again poor in Somalia — as forecast — “famine would be expected.”

However concerns are even higher for conflict-torn South Sudan, where fighting has compounded the fallout from the drought, and few humanitarian organisations remain.

In Kenya, the drought has led to a rise in conflict between pastoral communities looking to graze their animals, while roaming wildlife are coming into conflict with humans as they seek new water sources.

Nairobi, East Africa’s economic hub, is under strict water rationing for four months, when the next rainy season is expected to start.

Madrid (AFP): Spain’s defence ministry took political responsibility for the first time on Wednesday for a 2003 air accident which killed 62 Spanish soldiers as they were returning from Afghanistan. “There are reparations that are not economic, which have to do with recognition,” Defence Minister Maria Dolores de Cospedal told radio Cadena Cope a day after […]

Madrid (AFP): Spain’s defence ministry took political responsibility for the first time on Wednesday for a 2003 air accident which killed 62 Spanish soldiers as they were returning from Afghanistan.

“There are reparations that are not economic, which have to do with recognition,” Defence Minister Maria Dolores de Cospedal told radio Cadena Cope a day after she met family members of the victims.

Sixty-two Spanish soldiers and 13 Ukrainian and Belarusian crew were killed on May 26, 2003 when a Russian-built Yak-42 bringing them back from Afghanistan crashed in a mountainous area of northeast Turkey.

The defence ministry had chartered the plane from a Ukrainian firm despite warnings from military authorities that it was in poor shape.

The accident was followed by a scandal over the misidentification of the bodies of 30 of the soldiers, which had been delivered to the wrong families.

Three Spanish military officers received jail terms in 2009 for having misidentified the bodies.

The crash and subsequent misidentification scandal hurt the popularity of the then conservative government of Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar.

The top advisory body to the government ruled in an October report that the ministry had an “administrative” responsibility in the affair.

Cospedal said the defence ministry accepted the report’s conclusion that “there is a relationship between the work of the defence ministry and the tragedy.”

But she stressed this acknowledgement was symbolic and did not have financial or criminal consequences as the victims have already been compensated by insurance firms.

Cospedal said the defence ministry also agreed to search for all documents related to the hiring of the Yak-42 plane that crashed.

“We will do everything possible to find all the documents…related to the contracts,” she said.

Spain’s ruling conservative Popular Party, in power at the time of the accident, had up until now never accepted any responsibility.

“For the first time it was recognised that the Yak-42 never should have taken off,” said a spokeswoman for an association of victims’ families, Curra Ripolles.

Opposition parties have demanded the “immediate” resignation of the defence minister in power at the time, Federico Trillo, now Spain’s ambassador to Britain.

The government has said he will replaced in the coming weeks because his term is coming to an end, not because of the air tragedy.

Washington (AFP): The World Bank on Tuesday announced an additional $1.5 billion aid package for Iraq, to help the war-torn country implement reforms, improve public services and boost its economy. The package includes loan guarantees from the UK for about $372 million, and from Canada for about $72 million. “Despite an ongoing war and […]

Washington (AFP): The World Bank on Tuesday announced an additional $1.5 billion aid package for Iraq, to help the war-torn country implement reforms, improve public services and boost its economy.

The package includes loan guarantees from the UK for about $372 million, and from Canada for about $72 million.

“Despite an ongoing war and low oil prices, Iraq is undertaking bold transformational reforms that will safeguard economic stability and lay the foundations for longer term private sector development and inclusive growth for all Iraqis,” said Ferid Belhaj, World Bank director for the Middle East.

The reforms also will help to expand social safety nets “to reach the most vulnerable segments of the population,” he said in a statement.

The bank also approved $41.5 million for a program to improve management of the country’s public funds.

With the new package, the World Bank engagement in Iraq rises to nearly $3.4 billion, including support for reconstruction of areas recently recovered by government forces and a transport corridor investment.